


A lesson in being here

by GibbousLunation



Category: King Falls AM (Podcast)
Genre: Ben is a sweetheart, Brotherly Love, Canon Compliant, Canonical Sad Sammy moments, Episode 100, Episode 75, Found Family, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, References to Depression, episode 68, this is one big Ben gives Sammy the Hug He Needs fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-04
Updated: 2020-03-04
Packaged: 2021-03-01 03:21:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,601
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23018488
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/GibbousLunation/pseuds/GibbousLunation
Summary: He’d have waited forever for Sammy, but he wasn’t going to wait for him to leave them all behind.You belong right here, Sammy Stevens, Ben decided. Just you try to leave me.
Relationships: Ben Arnold & Sammy Stevens, King Falls & Sammy Stevens, Sammy Stevens/Jack Wright
Comments: 16
Kudos: 109





	A lesson in being here

**Author's Note:**

> Never fell more immediately in love with anything than I did with King Falls. Here's to phase 3 in Finally Letting Sammy Be Happy.  
> Not really a fix it fic just an exploration of things from Ben's perspective. Make sure to heed the episode tags for some heavier concepts and take care of yourself friends.

'Is that too much to expect? That I would name the stars for you? That I would take you there?' - Richard Siken

* * *

Ben had always tried to be gentle. He’d learned from a young age, trying to bring home stray dogs and share his juice boxes, that there was nothing more magic in all the world than a bit of patience and an armload of kindness. He’d had to practice translating the electric exclamation marks of his heart into his then tiny hands, how to give people space. Ben’s mother had always said he loved with his whole self, that Ben’s heart was not just on his sleeves but in his smile and his hands.

People didn’t always understand, though. There was a certain shadow around the eyes, the way they’d shift away minutely, that’s when patience had to kick in. That, and an insurmountable amount of stubbornness.

The Ben Arnold special was a hand outstretched and a refusal to give up on anyone he’d decided to care about. He cared, and he cared purposefully, and nothing was going to tell him not to.

He’d never seen anything quite like Sammy Stevens, though.

Sammy Stevens wasn’t just shadowed, wasn’t just inching away with shoulders up high around his ears. He wasn’t just an approximation of nerves; he was a practiced and careful production. Sammy was a plastered-on smile that didn’t reach his eyes, he was a constant battle between leaning into every arm slung around his narrow shoulders and a desire to run far, far away. Sammy was a contradiction, a parenthesis left on its lonesome, like he himself couldn’t figure out where he belonged.

Lucky for him, there was one seat right beside Ben that would always have Sammy’s name on it as far as Ben was concerned.

Ben could see it like it was strung up in neon lights some days, most days lately, and Ben wasn’t sure what had happened to make it broadcast so much louder. Emily was back, even if there was a mess of hang-ups that went hand in hand with that. Even if Ben had been sharper and more moderate to high rage than medium, there was proof that impossible wasn’t a word in their dictionary at this point.

Things should be better. Emily was at least talking to him, had figured out some of the lies from the truths, was starting to remember. They had a way of stopping the rainbow lights, and SammyandBen were still SammyandBen.

But then, there’d been Lily Wright, and suddenly Sammy was… pointed. Stubborn in his own electric heat sort of way, the one that felt one step removed from a full short circuit event, like Sammy wasn’t even entirely in control of the words that shot from him. Like he was running on full survival, defense mode.

He leaned away from every pat on his shoulder, shifted farther and farther into that awful quiet bland place. He didn’t understand. There’d always been some kind of strained fragility to Sammy, something underneath the impossible strength and snark that was already bending to the point of breaking and Ben didn’t dare push. He was terrified of whatever it was that could have knocked Sammy down so far already and made him think he couldn’t even tell Ben about it.

Ben knew people were made up of shields, most days. He knew Sammy was comprised of more armour plating than anyone, enough that he sometimes couldn’t even find his own way back out. He’d done his best to be as open and vulnerable as possible, and maybe gotten Sammy to breathe a little easier in the process, but this was something else. Not quite a weak point, but a contradiction. A center point, the minotaur Sammy had built his labyrinthian heart around.

It had been Greg fucking Frickard in the end, (but of course it was, asshole). A few unthinking words, a few low blows, a few absolutely heartless attempts to rattle, and there it was. The part of Sammy that was cracked and barely holding itself together, the piece of his heart that he didn’t let Ben see. The monster loose from the maze, as it were. Except, it wasn’t monstrous in the slightest.

Whoever had convinced Sammy that love was something to be feared had never met Ben ‘Stubborn to the Core’ Arnold.

“I’m asking you, as your friend, as your partner…. Please don’t do this?” Sammy hunched his shoulders up higher, eyes shining slightly too brightly as they flicked towards Ben and away. Sammy didn’t like to let himself be seen, he didn’t like to have anyone care about him, because he—Ben couldn’t make sense of it, because Jack was gone? Because Jack was missing?

Because somehow, some way, Sammy had convinced himself he’d let Jack down by not being able to beat the impossible. Because he’d convinced himself that he wasn’t the hero of his own story, that because he couldn’t fix it, he’d become the villain.

Ben knew when it was the time to be gentle, the time to wait and hold his hand out and let them figure out where they were comfortable existing. He looked at Sammy across from him, a tear sneaking it’s way down his stubbled cheek, with all the tense lines of embarrassment and so, so much open neon grief, and he frowned.

Sammy had learned love in the spaces in between, it seemed. He’d made himself a dichotomy, a version he hated and a version he hated that he couldn’t let himself be. Sammy had spent so long reinforcing the boundaries of what he assumed had to be he didn’t know how to let it not matter anymore. He saw a blackhole where Ben saw a forming star. An expanse of limitless nothing, a subtraction, where Ben saw caring hands, soft eyes, and smile lines he wouldn’t dare let fade.

Sammy had learned how to take kind words like an attack, how to twist everything against himself and use it to prove all the awful things he thought about himself right. He couldn’t hear anything Ben was saying because while Ben’s stubbornness was an unwillingness to leave, Sammy’s was an unwillingness to stay.

Ben couldn’t understand how anyone could take Sammy in, in all his fractions and wholes, and think of him wanting. With the way he’d unthinkingly given money to The Jensen’s without really knowing them at all, the way he’d made himself solid and constant just for Ben without ever asking anything of Ben in return, the way he’d watched his worst day replay in surround sound HD without so much as making a sound. Sammy was a study in self sacrificing idiocy, in defining yourself only in the things you gave away rather than what you held. Sammy Stevens was endless selflessness wrapped up in a protective persona of insults and quips, like if he rolled his eyes enough or said ‘mmhmm’ patronizingly enough, the world wouldn’t be able to see the kindness pouring through his fingertips.

It didn’t make sense that Sammy would think of himself so little, that he could measure Ben up in the people he’d helped, in the people who loved him, and not do himself the same courtesy.

Ben had spent years waiting for Sammy to trust him enough to tell him about the dark circles under his eyes, about the way he sometimes smelled a little too much like whiskey when Ben stopped by his place on weekends, about the fact his apartment was ‘just a place where he kept his stuff’. He’d waited, kept his hand palm side up, hoping Sammy would take it as a lifeline.

He’d have waited forever for Sammy, but he wasn’t going to wait for him to leave them all behind.

 _You belong right here, Sammy Stevens_ , Ben decided. _Just you try to leave me._

“I see you,” he decided instead, and held his hand outwards. “Let’s do this together.”

The problem was that Sammy didn’t take it. The problem was the unsigned contracts. The problem was that Sammy was running away instead of letting himself be cared for.

Ben didn’t know what to do.

It was so stupid, in hindsight, to think that Sammy would be swayed by nice words and love. To try to be forcefully gentle when Sammy was careening into the depths in front of them all. Emily and Troy had been touched, thought it impossibly sweet. Troy was the type to love loudly and out loud and tear up and hug with his whole self. Emily, though, Ben thought maybe her and Sammy had a bit more in common. They’d seen the worst of people over the years, had to make themselves smaller to fit what people thought of them, and never once let it dim their loving selves underneath it all. She’d been all for the idea of throwing a We Love You Sammy town hall celebration, but maybe Ben had been forcibly ignoring the sad twist to her smile, too.

Maybe they all had known, like Mary, that Sammy was an unstoppable destructive force when he set his mind to it, and Ben had been too wrapped up in naïve optimism to see the puzzle for the pieces. Then again, none of them had thought…

He’d bought a storage locker, that was the part that kept tripping Ben up. He had a storage locker a few hours out of town, piled up high with the life him and Jack had built, with all of the little trinkets and posters and things that cumulated in a shiny golden ring left sitting on a dresser drawer, and he’d just locked it all up and planned to throw away the key. He’d left most of it behind when he’d moved to King Falls, let his apartment stay empty and hollow, because he hadn’t planned to-

Because he’d-

Sammy was going to let them all think he’d moved back to Florida, in the end. Let Ben think he was ignoring phone calls, changed his number. Sammy had looked at Ben with all his fire and passion, all his fierce declarations of love, and his notebooks and his research and thought it would be that easy. That he could just leave and let Ben think that Sammy didn’t want him in his life anymore, that their years together, that all the ‘you’re like a brother to me’ comments meant nothing when splashed out on the big screen of Sammy’s self loathing. The worst part was that Sammy had thought that it would work.

Ben couldn’t stomach it, couldn’t make sense of any part of it. Did he think Ben would be mad? Did he think, that after a few months, Ben wouldn’t be desperate to know how Sammy was doing, how his new job was going, if he was _okay?_ Ben was fantastic at holding grudges when he wanted to, he could make big displays of hurt and outrage and ignore calls and silent treatment better than anyone, but he still cared.

It was awful and all consuming sometimes because sure, he was angry, but anger was just the other side of hurt, really. Anger meant he still spent time thinking about it, meant he had to convince himself to keep being mad so it wouldn’t slip into That Other Feeling, but even when Sammy had lied to him he’d barely been able to feign anger for longer than a week or two. (Because he knew Sammy was doing it out of love, that he’d been scared, that it would change things, that believing any of this meant believing things he’d staked so much on ignoring, and because it was entirely and fully impossible to stay angry at Sammy Stevens.)

He couldn’t turn off the part of him that cared, and he loved Sammy.

Even when in the midst of his fight with Troy he still checked in with Loretta on the side when he ran into her at the grocery store. He still knew Troy was _okay._ Did Sammy think that Ben was that easily lost? The idea of not knowing how Sammy was, whether he was still ordering his coffee black but his lattes with extra sugar, if he ever got a house tiger, whether his smile still crinkled up the corners of his eyes when he was a little too tired… Ben couldn’t stop loving Sammy. No amount of anger or hurt could make that less true.

Maybe Ben hadn’t made that clear enough, somehow.

There was a storage locker full of Sammy’s things out there, full of a life that Ben wasn’t a part of, and Sammy had wanted that for Ben. Ben would never get that damned phone call out of his head as long as he lived.

‘Forget about me’ he’d said. Like it was easy. Like anything about Sammy Stevens was forgettable.

The truck pulling up in the auditorium parking lot was like a heart ache in technicolour. Sammy looked like a washed-out drawing of himself someone hadn’t sketched in properly. He was trembling all over, minute little shakes, and his gaze wouldn’t quite focus in enough. He looked about ready to float away.

Ben’s heart was in his throat, his fists were clenched so tight at his sides he could feel the skin breaking under his nails. Emily’s hand on his shoulder was trembling, too, or maybe Ben was. He felt like an earthquake, like Sammy was the tremor under the sea, and the waves roaring through Ben were the thousand-foot crashing recompense ready to tear down everything around them.

“There he is,” Troy said softly beside him, brows drawn high and tight like he did when he was feeling guilty about the world in general. Like he was so sorry he couldn’t fix whatever had just broken open the earth in front of them.

Emily sniffed, a shaky relieved thing. Ben couldn’t even find it in him to be relieved, not even as Sammy stepped out of the truck, not even as Sammy’s hand didn’t quite leave the door handle like it was the last bastion anchoring him to the earth.

Sammy had never said where he was going, had he? He’d never said anything about a job, or a home, or anything to be running back to. He’d just said ‘giving up’, he’d just said ‘running away’. He’d said ‘Ben, I can’t do this,’ and ‘stop pushing’ and ‘forget about Jack’. He’d wanted Ben to forget about him, too. As if it was that simple. As if Ben could just forget the sun when the clouds rolled in. As if the ferocity and undercurrent of Sammy’s kindness and care and support hadn’t rewritten a part of who Ben was.

Sammy looked so tired, staring across the parking lot at them. He looked smaller, in a way he never had, like all the layers he put up between him and the breaking parts of himself had been worn clean. His gaze met Ben’s, and he looked _lost._

Ben took one step forwards, then another, and suddenly he was sprinting the short distance between them and throwing himself at Sammy, wrapping his arms around his middle and pressing his nose right there where his heart was pounding against his chest.

“You’re here, r-right? I didn’t- don’t tell me I lost you.” Ben choked out, squeezing his eyes shut.

“Ben, I—” Sammy hadn’t let do of the door, yet, hadn’t hugged him back yet. Ben hugged him tighter.

“We’re not letting you go, man.” Sammy was still trying to be tough for him, despite everything. Still being stubborn. “Stop trying to leave me b-be _hind_.”

He heard the quiet, sharp inhale. Felt the way Sammy’s chest hitched, the last bit of ice melting off of him. Sammy’s arms slipped around him, timid and slow. “I—I’m sorry, Ben, I…”

“Don’t be sorry,” Ben realized abruptly that his face was wet, that he was crying all over Sammy’s stupid shirt and he couldn’t stop. “Just- just be _here. Please_.”

A pause. Then suddenly, Sammy’s arms were squeezing him back just as tightly. “Okay, Ben. I’ll try, I promise, I’ll try.” 

Ben’s place had a chill about it, no matter what he did. Or, maybe more accurately, Sammy’s room—not the guest bedroom, god dammit, _Sammy’s_ room— had a chill about it.

The first few days felt like a blizzard. After the tower and the phone and the—Ben didn't want to name any of it. Sammy just seemed so hollowed out, hunched inwards and quiet in a way that Sammy wasn’t ever. Or at least, a way he’d never let Ben see before, which was almost worse. He sort of seemed to float everywhere in the apartment, never quite taking up any space or touching anything too long, like he wasn’t sure if he could.

Ben hated it, he hated that Sammy was only ever sitting on the edge of the couch cushions, only ever ‘borrowing’ from their shared kitchen, that he never let anything sit in the sink or the laundry, like it wasn’t _his._ That he still called it Ben’s Place. He hated that Sammy wouldn’t look directly at him, that he napped all day instead of talking to anyone at all.

It felt like Sammy was still trying to leave.

Ben was panicking, just a little. Kept waking up in the middle of the night with sudden confidence that he’d walk over to Sammy’s room and there’d never have been anyone there to begin with. That he’d made up the tower blowing up and the parking lot because he couldn’t cope with reality.

He checked on Sammy a lot. They didn’t talk about it.

He’d gone a little overboard maybe, the first day he’d bundled Sammy up and corralled him to Ben’s place with Troy’s gentle small talk in the background. Ben had rounded up everything sharp or dangerous while Sammy slept (he’d just been so numb and still, the only words he’d mumbled out were about being tired and Ben didn’t have the heart to do anything other than let him), and dumped it all in a garbage bag and gotten Emily to take it back home with her just in case.

The worst part wasn’t even considering all the ways Sammy could have done all of this already, or the way Emily had just pursed her lips, brushed a hand across Ben’s knuckles and nodded. The worst part was that Ben couldn’t stop thinking about it, Sammy’s wavering voice when he’d said he ‘wouldn’t have been anywhere’ without Ben, like that was okay. As if Ben deserved an award for existing and loving Sammy the way he did, like it wasn’t the easiest thing Ben had ever done.

It made him mad, in the sort of jagged edged breathing funny kind of way, that Sammy had learned love was hard at any point. That every gentle thing Sammy knew had been taken away from him. Sammy was the best thing that had ever happened to King Falls outside of Emily Potter herself, and Ben would say it was a damn near tie on that front. And it hurt, so immeasurably that Jack couldn’t be there to press that lesson back into his chest and make sure it stayed put.

Ben couldn’t even imagine how much it hurt for Sammy. He loved Emily more than he’d found the words to say, but he hadn’t had the time Sammy did. The time to think of then’s, and one day’s. To have that all disappear in front of you…

He remembered, the weeks following Emily’s abduction. When Ben had been in the midst of his most self loathing, blaming himself for everything, for ever daring to talk to Emily, for not just falling outwards and upwards with the force of all the things he meant to tell her then on the phone line, before it all. It had been so easy, to get stuck there in that miserable place. To feel like he at least had control over that much, to think that he could have changed any of it. Easier than thinking of losing Emily as a microcosm of a cold, dead universe that just didn’t care about any of them.

Ben had been able to dig himself out, because he had Sammy and he had a plan. Mainly, largely, because _he’d had Sammy._

Sammy, when he’d first lost Jack, had no one. Ben couldn’t imagine not being able to say how he felt even, without all that cloying fear Sammy carried every day, and then Frickard had—

Yeah, well. They all understood Frickard was the worst pretty well by this point.

Sammy though, seemed to place himself pretty low down on the town popularity ranking list as well. As if he’d thought any of them, any of their little hard-won family, wouldn’t find a way to bring him the stars if he’d asked. As if Emily and Troy and even _Hershel_ didn’t think the entire universe and then some of him. Maybe he didn’t know, somehow. Maybe he just needed to hear it.

“Hey… Sammy?” Ben whispered, peeking around the slightly ajar door to Sammy’s room. It was still, empty aside from the bed and the few odds and ends Ben had stuffed against the walls.

He’d wanted Sammy, no, _needed_ something for Sammy to hold onto when he’d first thought of bringing Sammy back with him (because Sammy had sold his old place without even saying so-) Ben had been desperate for him to feel the weight of how intensely he was loved, even only through a crappy assortment of printed photos and mementos from around town. In the face of Sammy’s silence, it all felt like a veneer, some meaningless swatch of paint over a gaping wound.

They’d just have to make more memories, then. Fill the whole room up until Sammy had no choice but to see every covered inch, maybe then it would finally reach him.

Sammy didn’t move, even as Ben pushed open the door and softly padded across the room. He wasn’t asleep, from what Ben could see. Just… lying there with his arm strewn across his eyes. His mouth pulled downwards in a distinctly unhappy expression that made Ben itch to hug him, but he didn’t know if— then again, being too cautious was what led them here in some ways. Being unwilling to talk about things or push too far. Sammy needed someone to care in that purposeful stubborn way Ben specialized in, didn’t he?

Maybe it was a little dramatic, but Ben wondered, not for the first time, if he and Sammy weren’t somehow cosmically linked. A chance meeting that was set up somewhere between the spiraling galaxies and star light. Maybe they’d have found each other in another world where Jack hadn’t gotten any phone calls, one where Sammy was happy.

Maybe that was just a sign that things would have to work out one day. Ben hadn’t gotten to see that version of Sammy yet, but he would.

Ben sat down next to him and inched his hand across to bump into Sammy’s free one. “Sammy.”

Sammy breathed long and slow, like he was gearing himself up for something, like an engine on its last fumes and still trying to make it home. Ben _ached._ He pushed his hand into Sammy’s, laced their fingers together and squeezed, suddenly overwhelmed.

“You wanna watch a movie?” He said anyways, struggling around the weight in his chest. “Harry Met Sally’s on.”

Sammy shifted, taking another steeling breath. “Yeah, sure Ben. Sounds great.” He moved his arm and blinked up at Ben, with the most strained smile in the world, but that was fine, because it was what Sammy could give him right now and it was still something. It was still more than nothing.

He tried not to hover too close as they shuffled towards the couch; he busied himself by darting towards the linen closet to grab his favorite quilt (a Betty Arnold special), and two cups of hot cocoa while Sammy got settled, instead. This version of Sammy was unsettling, though. His bun was loose, Ben had never seen him with his hair down like this, and he wasn’t even feigning indignance or sarcasm. He was just, sad. It made Ben want to build a pillow fort, or take Sammy on a vacation, or do something drastic like hug him tightly to his chest and never let him go.

Scooping up both mugs and heading to the living room, quilt in tow, he found Sammy sort of. Hovering again. Staring blankly at the couch like he’d forgotten where he was going. Untethered, just like that moment he’d stepped out from the truck. A compass that couldn’t find North again.

 _Okay,_ Ben thought, and placed the mugs on the coffee table.

“Man, it’s been a while since we’ve had a romcom night, huh?” He turned towards Sammy, watching as light flickered back into his dark eyes. Sammy shook himself a little, as a wince of a smile playing across his wan face.

“Yeah, guess it has.”

Ben flopped backwards, and patted the spot beside him, unable to shake the tension behind his shoulders and rising in his gaze. Sammy should just casually flop down beside him, he shouldn’t have even needed the invitation, but this was a different Sammy, and this Sammy was hesitating. The rules were different, but Ben was an anchor to Sammy’s drifting weather balloon right now, Ben was the cautious gravitational pull keeping his comets align. He just had to relearn how to hear what Sammy needed.

He sat down slowly, stiffly. Ben felt for all the world like he could shatter apart, but he threw the quilt across Sammy’s shoulders anyways, heart in his throat. It was…fine. If Sammy needed space. Ben could do that. At least they were in the same room, this time. It was something, it was more than nothing.

The movie played out in loud colours across from them, but Ben was too focused on Sammy’s breathing beside him. It was real, Sammy was still here. It was more than nothing, _god,_ let it be more than nothing.

“Ben,” Sammy said, softly after a long moment. “It’s okay.”

 _It’s not_ , Ben wanted to yell back. _It’s not okay, you’re hurting Sammy. I can’t keep you here and whole, and everything is so much worse than I ever thought, and I didn’t_ know _. I didn’t know any of this was this bad, and I’m supposed to be here for you, and I don’t even know what you need right now._

“You are here, Ben,” Sammy’s voice was a shaky whisper, and Ben realized with a horrible lurch he’d been half speaking out loud. “You didn’t know. I didn’t want you to know.”

Ben was two opposite magnetic poles, he was a diverging line, he couldn’t bring himself to look at Sammy and see the expression that brought his voice to that hallowed echo, because if he did then maybe Sammy would- It would make it real, it would make all of this real, and Ben needed a plan. He needed a journal for this, but he didn’t know where to start. Maybe his next move would be the last straw that sent Sammy into the stratosphere, maybe Sammy would leave anyways despite everything, maybe this was an impossibility Ben couldn’t outstubborn.

Sammy nudged him, leaned closer, and wrapped a larger arm around him. “Ben. You didn’t know.”

Ben bit his lip. “I knew you were hurting, I knew you needed me, I just couldn’t- I didn’t know… when did it get so _bad_ , Sammy?”

Sammy sighed, a wet and warbly thing, as a small self depreciating laugh filled the space between them. It was so tragic, so tiny and pained, everything in Ben turned and collapsed, realigning to the same axis he’d known for years now and—

“I think maybe always. I never liked…. Being me, much. I don’t…. I don’t know how to be here, when he’s not anywhere, Ben. He was. He’s the best part of me.” Sammy shrugged, a half thought. “I want to try, I wasn’t lying to you. I just, I don’t know where to start.” 

Ben pulled Sammy against him, pulling until he could feel the scruff of Sammy’s beard against his shoulder, and twisting his neck enough to plant a kiss on his temple. There were a hundred things he wanted to say, then. About Sammy having so much good in him, about the bits of himself that he kept giving away that Ben loved so much, about how he made Ben the best version of himself. Maybe those were words for another time, to be drilled in by Emily and Troy and maybe even Lily one day. But, for now.

Sammy was letting himself be held, letting himself be small and honest and so, so pained, and Ben had never loved him more fiercely than here where their breaths synched up with near sobs, where Sammy’s hand twitched as Ben squeezed his fingers tightly, and where Sammy finally decided to squeeze back just as tightly.

“We’ll start together. You don’t have to be here on your own anymore, Sammy.” Ben whispered back. “You never have to be on your own.”

It was a nightmare, it had to be. There was a flurry of motion as Lily sprung into action beside him, and Emily tried to figure out the switches to turn the damn board off, Ben! But Sammy was just, staring.

The station shouldn’t have been so dark, even at four am there was usually streetlights and cars, there was usually noise. Outside of Lily and Emily, there was just. Nothing. And then there was the static. And the voice.

_‘You can’t even love yourself’_

It wasn’t Jack, Ben knew. Sammy’s Jack had worked through a lot with Sammy, gotten him medication and learned how to read the signs of an impending problem, and had known Sammy since young fresh-faced college days. Ben knew that the trails of wrinkles by Sammy’s eyes were storybooks filled with their memories together, that the ring Sammy had started wearing was laced with promises and all the one days Sammy was finally starting to believe were real.

Sammy’s Jack knew the seams and the wears and tears on Sammy’s heart better than anyone and Sammy adored him for it. The Jack that Sammy loved wouldn’t manipulate him like this, wouldn’t throw any of it back at him like barbed wire coated poison. They’d stolen Jack’s voice, was all. Messed with memories of promises between them and turned them inside out, but it wasn’t real.

It didn’t make it less painful, though.

“We have to go, Sammy,” Lily gave him a look over Sammy’s shoulder, eyes blazing. Neither of them could take hearing this fake voice too much longer, but Sammy was… Sammy was _listening to it._ After all the nights wrapped up in a quilt, all the cocoa and romcoms, all the hours with nothing but phone lines and microphones and them, Ben would rather die than let Sammy sink back to that awful place he’d been. Not on his damned watch.

He cupped Sammy’s bearded face in both hands, dragging his distant stare towards Ben’s. He looked so scared, like he really believed the awful garbage spilling out from the blank spaces of the speakers. Like Jack, the Jack Wright Sammy loved, could have ever said any of those words and meant them.

“Sammy,” Ben tried again, and god, the streaks of tears down Sammy’s face could have splintered his heart alone, if not for the tiny broken way Sammy managed Jack’s name before crumpling just slightly more.

“That’s not him, Sammy. You have to know its not.” And he didn’t mean to sound so pleading, but there was a moment, a fraction of Ben’s shaking heart, that wondered why Sammy could look at the whole forest of love he’d been given and think he deserved anything other than all of it. How Sammy could want to read into the lies and find a way to make them fit anyways.

Ben moved closer, pressing their foreheads together for a moment and letting his words fall from him in weighted measures. “He loves you, Sammy. If there’s one thing I know about Jack Wright it’s that he loves you, and I _will_ get him back.”

Sammy still looked so hollowed out, like a marionette with the strings cut. His breath hitched just once, before he nodded slightly. Ben stepped back slightly, scooping Sammy’s headphones off in the process.

“We have to go, guys!” Emily called, and _shit,_ there was something creeping out from the computer monitors, just out of the corner of his eye. Something was coming, and Sammy was still- Ben held out a hand, leveled Sammy with a pleading look. “Hey, be here with me, remember? Sammy, I need you.”

Sammy’s gaze flickered over to the console, and for a moment Ben’s heart stopped. He’d drag Sammy out of here kicking and screaming if he had to, but god if he didn’t want it to come to that.

_Just take my hand this one time, Sammy, just this once._

Sammy’s brow furrowed, some tangled emotion twisting his features. Then he closed his eyes and slipped his hand into Ben’s.

“Not goin’ anywhere, Ben.”

Ben couldn’t help the flicker of a grin that burst through him as Sammy’s fingers squeezed around his.

“Yeah, not without me you’re not.”

**Author's Note:**

> Ben, heaping blankets onto Sammy who is now a Burrito: good now you can't leave 
> 
> im at @clankclunk most places!


End file.
